Comedian Bob Mortimer amazed and delighted fans when he returned to the stage just three months after a lifesaving triple bypass operation.

But the star today reveals how he was nearly forced to abandon his 2016 comeback when his heart rate soared to dangerous levels after an energetic song- and-dance number.

The comic wore a heart monitor on stage, and had been told by doctors to stop the performance if he hit 153 beats per minute – about twice the normal resting heart rate.

The show must go on: Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer during their comeback tour at Congress Theatre on January 29, 2016

But after he and comedy partner Vic Reeves had finished their opening routine at the Leeds Arena, the device showed a reading of more than 160.

‘I had to decide at that moment do I stop? What do I do?’ he recalls on Desert Island Discs today.

‘But I carried on. I am kind of really grateful to those 7,500 scary faces that night. When you’ve had a heart thing, a lot of the problems are psychological. So I thank you, the people of Leeds, who attended that show.’

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Mortimer, 59, also tells presenter Lauren Laverne how his life had once been blighted by debilitating shyness, saying it ‘probably defined the first 30 years of my life’.

‘It’s a crippling thing,’ he says. ‘It can be very lonely knowing that you have things to say but you daren’t say them. Knowing that you could contribute to something but you don’t dare quite do it.’

Mortimer, who studied law at Sussex University, reveals the condition was so isolating that he never spoke to fellow students.

Mortimer was nearly forced to abandon his comeback when his heart rate soared to dangerous level. He wore a heart monitor on stage, and had been told by doctors to stop the performance if he hit 153 beats per minute

‘Throughout my entire three years at Sussex I never spoke to another law student,’ he says. ‘I talked in tutorials but as soon as they finished I was away back to my room to listen to my records.’

The father-of-two – who married his partner of 22 years, Lisa Matthews, half an hour before his operation – also tells how he and Reeves had sometimes wished they were bigger stars, but adds: ‘Now, as I’m older, I think we got lucky. It’s the perfect place to be.

‘We live very ordinary lives. I’m not bothered by anyone and anything and I think that’s quite a nice place to be, on reflection.’